It's early June, which means it's once again time for the entire video game industry to pick up and head to the Los Angeles Convention Center for a week of unmitigated gaming hype known as E3. Ars will be sending three reporters out to the show this year to cover all the press conferences, game announcements, and playable demos we can get our hands on between the show's unofficial start on Monday and the expo hall's closing on Thursday.

As we gear up for our trip, we thought we'd share a bit of what we hope and/or expect to see at this year's show. Feel free to add your own desires and predictions in the comments, but try to keep them within the realm of possibility (so no predicting a new Metroid game, amirite?)

Virtual reality's time to shine?

Last year's E3 packed in more excitement than most, solely because it was the coming-out party for new console hardware from Sony and Microsoft. This year's E3 doesn't have that same kind of hook, but it may be remembered as the year that virtual reality finally came into its own.

True, virtual reality has at least played a role at E3 since the Oculus Rift made its smashing debut at the show two years ago. Still, it feels like this is the year that the hardware, software, and industry are all aligned to really make a serious consumer push into the space before E3 2015 comes and goes.

Further Reading

Console maker aims to create a sense of "presence" with its head-mounted display.

On the hardware side, both Oculus and Sony will be on hand demonstrating the Rift and Project Morpheus, respectively. Even if those key pieces of hardware haven't been updated at all from the versions shown at the Game Developers Conference in March, it feels like the technology is already at a point where it could be appealing to a substantial audience of early adopters (and not just the kind of early adopters that suffer through the issues with the first Oculus Rift development kit). And if that wasn't enough, an upstart named GameFace will be showing off its completely wireless, Android-based, 2.5K resolution head-mounted display at the show next week, providing yet another vision for the future wearing a screen on your head.

Yes, Oculus still refuses to give a firm target date for a consumer-facing version of the Rift, Project Morpheus definitely won't be out before 2015, and GameFace hasn't even released as a development kit version yet. But E3 has always been about showing off hardware that is a little bit too early for prime time. This year's show could very well be the last one where these new head-mounted displays are still prototypes and not products.

Outside of the displays, good controls are just as important to the VR experience. To that end, Virtuix will be on hands to show off another updated prototype of its Omni multi-directional harness/walking control platform, complete with a promised virtual tour of Amsterdam to demo. We might be even more interested in the opportunity presented by ControlVR, a just-launched Kickstarter project that promises finger-level hand and arm tracking in a form factor like a fancy Power Glove, starting at $350. We'll try it out next week, and we're hoping it will make interacting with a virtual space feel much more natural than fiddling with a controller.

The real appeal of the new virtual reality depends on the games, though, and we think this will be the E3 where we finally start seeing near-finished products that will represent the first wave of actual virtual reality games. We've been told to expect a number of titles designed for the Rift and Project Morpheus at this year's show, both from major publishers and from indie developers in the "IndieCade" booth. These should range from major shooters to artistic projects. While the game concepts and short demos we've seen at previous trade shows have been interestingin theirown right, we hope this is the year where we can start to envision actually using these new headsets to play full-fledged games and not experiments.

It's possible that the latest VR revolution will eventually fizzle out with a whimper, much like the VR hype in the mid-'90s. We don't think that it's going to happen, but even if it does, we'll enjoy the train of hype while it lasts.-Senior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland

An indie surprise?

Indie darlings like Broken Age can be easy to stumble upon, both on and just off the E3 show floor.

Between E3’s towering posters and zillion-inch screens always hide at least a few guerilla game demos and presentations. It’s pretty easy for small-fry game makers to drag a laptop into the LA Convention Center, find a chair, and enjoy some free foot traffic in the rooms and hallways that don’t require laminate badges. These often hide some of E3’s most interesting surprises, many of which we’ve written about in our semi-regular indie round-ups. Rest assured, we’ll hunt the halls until we find nervous-looking game makers afraid of being thrown out.

That being said, E3 also enjoys a few official indie presentations, including the Media Indie Exchange demo event and the Horizon press conference at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art. The latter debuted last year with reveals of Double Fine’s Broken Age and Polytron’s Fez II (a game that, apparently, may never see the light of day). We expect even more—and weirder—game debuts at this year’s follow-up.

Valve’s recent Steam Machines delay buys both of the console titans more time to penetrate living rooms. Thus, at this point, whoever locks down the more exciting exclusives will take this year’s E3 crown—and possibly the next-gen sales lead. Expect some serious pandering to fans and sniping against the competition.-Technology Reporter Sam Machkovech

Signs of life from Nintendo?

Last year's E3 was my first, and it just happened to coincide with the launch of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It'd be hard to top that show for Big News Announcements and PR bombast—Microsoft's missteps and since-retracted statements, the beyond-enthusiastic response Sony got when it undercut Microsoft on price by a full $100—but this year is when those consoles will start to fulfill their early promise.

Both Sony and Microsoft will have had time to work on new software updates, adding new features, fixing bugs, and filling functionality gaps. Developers will have had more time with the development tools and more experience wringing more performance out of the consoles. And, of course, games released one or two years after a console's release are normally much better than the ones released at launch. Without big new hardware announcements to make, these new games can take center stage.

Further Reading

From Nintendo, honestly, I'm just hoping to see some signs of life. One of the reasons people get so worried about Nintendo (aside from the outsize impact the company had on kids who grew up in the '80s and '90s) is that Nintendo is a fundamentally different company than Microsoft or Sony. Those two are tech giants with a presence in many markets. If the Xbox or PlayStation divisions them make a major misstep or have a console that doesn't set the world on fire—I'm thinking of the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death saga and the PlayStation Vita, respectively—the rest of the company can often cushion that hit. All Nintendo has is video games. If Nintendo is bad enough at video games for long enough, no more Nintendo.

So I look at the mostly glowing reviews of Mario Kart 8 and the continuing buzz around Super Smash Bros., and I see a chance for Nintendo to turn it around. The Wii U is doing historically bad, but a couple of hit games could be enough to get Nintendo to the next round. The Gamecube was Nintendo's worst-selling console to date, but it was followed by the runaway success of the Wii (even if the Wii's buzz faded substantially by the end of its console cycle). Mario Kart is a system seller. The upcoming Smash Bros. sequel will probably be a system seller. Hopefully Nintendo can capitalize on that momentum by surprising us with some other good software or even by shuffling its hardware around a bit to juice sales (cheaper, GamePad-less Wii U, anyone?).-Product Specialist Andrew Cunningham

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.